Shadows
by Feanna
Summary: Aredhel falls into the shadows. A Silmarillonfic and my interpretation of why Aredhel could have married Eol.


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or even the plot. That is all Master Tolkien's work, bows humbly. This is just an idea I wanted to explore.

Pairings: Aredhel/Eöl

Warnings: Some angst, mention of rape

Shadows

She had won her freedom. Finally she was free to do what she wanted without her overbearing brother trying to force her into what was best for her. She was her own person! She could make her own choices!  
She was on her way to her friends (that said brother didn't approve of). All those stories about the dangerous places were not going to keep her. She was Aredhel of the house of Finwe after all: A powerful Lady in her own right.

With thoughts like these on her mind it was, that Aredhel sister of Turgon left her brother's hidden city, for she had grown bored inside its confines. She could not bear being confined and so this independent spirit left the security and peace that she had tired of, behind to seek adventure.  
Behind her stayed those who might have envied her her freedom, but it might also have been that those left behind knew to cherish what peace was to be found. For they remembered that Gondolin was a gift, not a prison and that even its seemingly impenetrable walls would not be able to keep the troubled world outside at a distance forever.  
Turgon indeed feared that it might be his sister's journey that would bring the first crack(s). And right he was to fear for is city and his sister.

Aredhel rode through the sunshine surrounded by her escort. She had allowed it as appropriate for her station and refused to acknowledge its dire necessity although they had already been attacked once barely a weeks travel away from Gondolin. Aredhel nevertheless continued to ignore the increasing danger and bathed in the sunlight,  
refusing to notice that it did not cast a healthy glow about the world around her but bathed everything in a sickly light that could not seem to penetrate the dark shadows of the sinister wood they currently rode through.

Her guards though had remarked upon the movements they could now and then pick up in the shadows. To them the second attack did not come as a surprise, but surprised they were by the sheer numbers of their opponents and their fierceness,born out of pure evil. Twisted creature they were and hatred shone in their eyes, for the pure light that surrounded the elves they attacked. This hatred burned hot, born out of jealousy and a twisted desire to destroy what they could never possess.  
It was a long and fierce battle for the elves fought bravely but one by one the guards fell. Then the last survivors succeeded in opening a path for Aredhel with whose safety they had been charged and screamed at her to flee,  
for they were unable to protect her any longer. And she who had held stubbornly on to her sense of superiority was forced to run away as fast as her own legs would carry, for all horsed has since been slain. She ran through the shadows. Shadows that whispered and called her name and she was lost in them, never to emerge again,  
but still she would not admit her fall to herself for she was "free and mistress of her own fate".

And thus it was that Aredhel came to a clearing at a cliffside and out of a cave mouth came Eöl and although there was a shadow about him that clouded the light peculiar to the firstborn Aredhel did not see it,  
because she was already lost in a world full of shadows.

Eöl's had long since been a twisted existence. When he first laid eyes upon Aredhel, he immediately recognized her for what she was: A true lady of a noble house whose light was brighter that anything that had a right to exist in his twisted world. And a desire possessed him, a desire not unlike that of the evil beings that had killed Aredhel's escort, a desire to own. This desire flooded his blood and so it came that he picked up the injured, exhausted and nearly unconscious elleth and took her to his bed. And in the way of the elves they were bound that night by the consummation of their physical union.  
So it came that Aredhel was bound to the world of shadows she had been lost in, but she did not see the shadows for she had been rendered blind for true light. So she told herself that this was what she wanted and a son was born.

A long time Aredhel lived in the world of shadows with her husband and her son until their desires brought her out and back to Gondolin. There in the bright daylight she could now longer deny the shadow that clung to her husband. She died then, from his hand, from an attack that was meant for their son.

Before her death she saw the darkness in Eöl but she would not see it in her son whose life she had saved and so the shadow entered the white city and he had a name: Maeglin, but he was not seen. 


End file.
